Friday, 18 April 2008

Konami ID site still broken, but MGO does update

If you've been following the mess that has been created by Konami surrounding the release of the Metal Gear Online beta programme, you'll know all about the various IDs you have to create before you can play the game.

The beta itself became available on the 17th to people that pre-ordered MGS4 around the world or, if you are lucky enough to be in the UK/Europe, on the PS Store as a free download.

There are two things you'll notice when you download the beta:

It requires both a Konami ID and a GAME ID to be able to play. The two IDs cannot be the same, so you can't just use your PSN ID for both of them.

The beta has a v1.01 download available for it already.

So far, due to the massive weight of traffic heading to the Konami ID site, it has been almost impossible to set up the two IDs necessary to play the game. There was a glimmer of hope that you could complete all the forms needed to gain your IDs for a few minutes today, but it broke again soon after without actually ever finishing the process.

The v1.01 download, however, does work as long as you choose peer-to-peer mode. Peer-to-peer operates in the same way as a BitTorrent, sharing the update file between users rather than everyone hammering the server. Choose this option if you actually want to get the update, as the HTML option just doesn't work at all right now.

Our advice to you is simple; grab the v1.01 update via the peer-to-peer option, wait until the 19th or 20th to register your Konami IDs at the site. And use a PC rather than the PS3 browser if you can. If you have to use the PS3 browser to get your IDs, use a keyboard if you have one.

Our advice to Konami is simple; use the PSN ID next time and avoid all this nonsense.

Quite how these unique IDs will play out when MGS4 launches is unclear, and it is certainly going to make Home integration for MGO an interesting topic - imagine meeting someone and noting their PSN ID, launching into an MGO game, and then not being able to find them because their name is different.